Tag Archives: RECIPES

RECIPES

Irish Stew

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Ireland doesn’t always stand out as one of the great culinary contributors to world cuisine. Exotic? No. A satisfier-of-the-masses with delightful takeaway dishes? No. In fact, the country’s most well-known contribution can probably be summed up in three items: Guinness, Tayto crisps and Barry’s tea.

With this in mind we have decided to offer you another option for this year’s coming St. Patrick’s Day celebration other than swilling Guinness, devouring cheese and onion Tayto’s and nursing yourself with a nice cup of Barry’s the next day of course. Irish Stew can be deemed the national dish of Ireland but, despite coming from an Irish family, I don’t think I have ever eaten it let alone actually cooked this dish.

As we all know it rains a lot in Ireland… A LOT! But the simplicity of the flavours and great ingredients means this dish will warm you up on the most miserable of days. The best meat to use would be lamb neck, but we know from hard earnt experience the only place to find that would be a butcher and could possible break the bank.

We have used simple diced lamb chunks from our local supermarket, and created a fantastic stock from deglazing the pan. A tip when browning the meat – DO NOT STIR!! Leave it there till it caramelises and the meat will simple come off. This also gives it a beautiful mahogany-brown colour.

Enjoy with a cold Guinness or, as we did, a glass of Club Orange.

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Irish Stew

Serves 6
20min prep
60min cooking

500g   Floury potatoes (Maris Pipers or King Edwards)
500g   Waxy potatoes (New potatoes or charlotte potatoes)
3          onions (one quartered and other 2 chopped into thick rings)
1 bay leaf
Fresh Thyme
Black peppercorns
1kg      carrots (peeled and thickly chopped)
1kg      Lamb stewing steak
1ltr      cold water
200g   smoked streaky bacon (cut into strips)
Salt and pepper (to season)
Chopped chives

Start by peeling and cut into chunks the floury potatoes and leave them in a bowl of cold water to prevent them browning. Cut the waxy potatoes in half no need to peel, again leave them in a bowl of cold water.

Quarter one onion and roughly chop one carrot. Place this in a small saucepan with bay leaf, 2 sprigs of thyme and 6 black peppercorns.

Heat 1 tablespoon of sunflower oil in a heavy bottomed pan. Once it has come up to the heat, batch cook the lamb placing the cooked lamb in a dish to stand. Deglaze* the pan in-between batches, pour this liquid into the saucepan with the onions, carrot, bay and peppercorns keep this on a low simmer; this will become the stock for the stew.

Once the lamb is cooked do the same with the bacon till crispy and set aside with the lamb, again deglaze the pan and add this to the liquid to the stock to simmer away.

Heat 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil add the onions and turn down the heat. Cook them down till soft and sweet.

Once the onions are cooked add the meat, the remainder carrots, floury potatoes and strain the stock into the pot, adding more water to cover the meat as necessary. Bring to the boil and lower the heat to cook for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes skim the water and add the waxy potatoes and few sprigs of fresh thyme and continue simmering for 20 minutes or till lamb is tender.

Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve with chopped chives.

*remove the lamb and pour cold water into the pan to remove the cooking liquids

h&h

 

RECIPES

Celeriac, Potato and Kale Bake

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It’s been a little while since our last blog post – a few things have been in the pipe line but bigger things are on there way. We promise!!

This recipe is a winter warmer – relatively healthy comfort food to keep you going in the series of cold snaps we have had throughout the last few weeks to make up for what has been a generally warm winter so far. All vegetarian, filling, and comforting with the satisfying blend of root veg and (occasionally much maligned) kale to add colour – you can almost feel the newly restored warmth coming of you already. Enjoy!

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Ingredients:

Sauce:

300 ml white wine

300 ml stock

10 g corn flour

160 g cheddar cheese + extra for topping

salt and pepper to season

 

Bake:

1 celeriac

3 potatoes

150g kale

 

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Chop the celeriac into chunks of about 1.5 cm. Once chopped, place in a large saucepan with cold water and bring to the boil. In the meantime chop the potatoes into similar size chunks. After the celeriac has cooked for 5 minutes, add the potatoes to the boiling water. Cook for 10 minutes before placing the kale on top of the saucepan in a colander and steam for 5 minutes or until all the vegetables are cooked. Place in a oven proof dish and leave while you prepare the sauce.

For the sauce, reduce the wine to about a tenth of the quantity in a small pan. Add the stock to the reduction and heat through. Taking a few tablespoonfuls of the stock mixture and add it to the corn flour, mixing the two together to create a smooth paste. Once thoroughly combined, add to the rest of the stock mixture and stir. Add the cheese and stir until it is melted.

Once the sauce is fully combined, pour over the celeriac, potatoes and kale. Grate cheese over the top of the dish and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Serve with a few grinds of black pepper fresh from the oven.

h&h

INTRODUCTION

Beginnings

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Hello and welcome to howellandharte.com, a new blog from Will Howell and Conor Harte. We live and cook in Clapham, London, and our main goal is to teach others how to eat in a way that is affordable and healthy but, above all, tasty.

Some might ask how this blog is going to differ from anything else that is out there on the endless oceans of the world wide web in a market flooded with opinions, fad diets and never ending lists of super foods (black pudding is the latest food stuff tipped for the top if you haven’t been following ‘food news’ lately). For the most part food blogs look at the latest trends and, simply put, how to stuff yourself rotten or focus on a range of incredibly specific dietary requirements.

This is not our focus, although there will certainly be a number of coeliac friendly and over-indulgent recipes along the way. We want to teach others to approach food in a more thoughtful way rather than settling for compulsive consumption. We want to encourage people to eat seasonally using simple recipes that don’t necessarily require half the kitchen equipment and a plethora of ingredients to make.

We want to encourage people to think about where their food comes from, encouraging people to avoid eating cheap meat every evening and opting for better quality meat, less often. By the same token we also want to show people how to eat more vegetarian meals mid-week.

So with that in mind you can expect to see the following posts over the next few weeks: we will be launching the first of our ‘Shopping Basket’ features, giving you a week’s worth of seasonal recipes from basket to bin giving you a taster of what is to come; we will be working on the first of our vlogs, the macaroni challenge, where we pit our recipe against some of the greats already out there; we will be posting what we think are the various essentials for your kitchen if you are a new cook just starting out; finally, we will be talking to our own circle of cooks to come up with a list of top seasonal dishes for you to work into your own repertoire.

To make sure you don’t miss any of these you can follow us on twitter (@howellandharte) and facebook (Howell&harte). You can also follow our YouTube account ready for our vlog post at the start of February.

h&h